collaborative

American  

[kuh-lab-uh-ray-tiv, -er-uh-tiv] / kəˈlæb əˌreɪ tɪv, -ər ə tɪv /

adjective

1. characterized or accomplished by cooperation or working together.

   collaborative methods;

   a collaborative report.

2. relating to or involving several organizations, groups, people, etc., working together for a common purpose.

   My doctor is now part of a collaborative practice.

   Modern policing is trending toward collaborative law enforcement, where police officers work hand-in-hand with community leaders and neighborhood associations.

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noun

1. a group of people working together for a common purpose.

   The collaborative of doctors was able to gather important new information about the illness by pooling anonymized patient data.

Usage

What does collaborative mean? Collaborative is an adjective that describes an effort in which people work together (that is, one in which they collaborate). Collaborative is often used in a positive context to refer to two or more parties successfully working together on a goal or shared project. It’s also increasingly used as a noun for an organized joint effort. Example: The groundbreaking new album was a collaborative effort by the two musicians, who usually have very different styles.

Other Word Forms

• uncollaborative
  adjective
• collaboratively
  adverb
• uncollaboratively
  adverb

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Etymology

Origin of collaborative

collaborate + -ive

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Explanation

The adjective collaborative describes something accomplished by working together with others. With a collaborative effort, a big job can be completed in very little time. When you collaborate, you cooperate, or join forces, with other people — working on a project, brainstorming ideas, even assigning responsibility for who will do what. So something that has these qualities is collaborative. From playing in a band to making a movie, feeding the students at a school to building a house, when you work toward a shared goal, it's collaborative.

Example Sentences

See Examples For:

collaborative

He seems to oscillate between a collaborative and combative view.

From Slate ● Oct. 20, 2026

Coffield plans to provide their locations to MapBiomas, a collaborative network of universities, nongovernmental organizations, and technology companies that tracks fires and changes in land use throughout the Amazon.

From Science Daily ● Oct. 18, 2026

Dufour said he particularly valued the collaborative nature of the event, adding: "We're all coming from different islands and we're all facing similar challenges."

From BBC ● Oct. 3, 2026

Silva and the team, which had shared the photos and videos as collaborative posts on Instagram, complied with the demand and took down the content that afternoon.

From Los Angeles Times ● Sep. 30, 2026

Namely, the creation of the Farewell Address was an inherently collaborative process.

From "Founding Brothers: The Revolutionary Generation" by Joseph J. Ellis

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